Category Archives: happy

On the way back from Simon's place last night, I took a streetcar with
a wonderful surprise. The streetcar driver sang out the stops in this
beautiful, beautiful voice! I was so tempted to take the car all the
way to Humber just to keep listening to him. On the way out, I told
him that I really wished I could tip on the TTC and that it was the
awesomest streetcar ride ever. I wish the other riders on the
streetcar were as appreciative. He deserved a lot of warm and fuzzy
thoughts!

I love it when people go above and beyond, turning even ordinary jobs
into something that brings joy to other people. I remember the
announcer for Delta Airlines at the Washington airport whose sense of
humor over the public announcement system made the four-hour delay so
worthwhile.

Since childhood, I have had a gift for working with computers. For a
while, this seemed like the perfect fit for my life. My grade school
teachers were not surprised to find me interested in computers in high
school. My high school teachers were not surprised that I took
computer science in university. One of my university teachers told me
I'd do well in "hard" computer science and encouraged me to go for a
master's degree, maybe even a PhD.

But I am also awakening to a gift I have with people. I want to reach
millions and millions of people over generations and generations. I
want to lift them up, inspire them, share my experiences with them.
I want to tell their stories and help make their dreams come true.
This is what I want to do with my life.

I don't want to wait until I've made my money before I do good. I want
to get out there and live and love and do and write and speak and
share. I will keep my needs simple, my schedule flexible, and my
overhead low so that I can spend as much time as possible developing
myself and other people.

I belong to the world not just as a mind, but also as a heart, and I
will make a life that allows me to express both.

So, concretely, how can we make this happen?

I want to repay the trust the university has shown in me by finishing my master's degree and doing well.

I want to set up a newsletter and topic-focused blog that inspires people and shares tips with them.

I want to write best-selling books. The second book will be easier than the first, so I should really just sit down, pull out material from my blog, do more research, and make this happen. Hey, maybe even before I'm 25. ;)

I want to be a totally awesome professional speaker. That way, I can reach *lots* of people with not only my message but with my communication style. It's also a good reason to meet people around the world.

I want to set up an organization for generous connecting.

Lots more!

How can I make this self-supporting? I want to get as quickly as
possible to the point where I don't have to worry about my expenses so
that I can follow these crazy ideas for free. Then I can build up my
crazy idea capital, and then we're off!

The best way for me to do that is not to plan for retirement at 60
with a slow-and-steady savings plan, but to take advantage of my crazy
ideas, train my intuition, and get better at going from crazy idea to
reality.

If I open my mind and look for ways I can create value for other
people (like my networking business cards that list my favorite
networking books!), then I'll probably be able to create enough value
to make the kind of life I want.

(Crazy idea! Trust in coincidence by having business cards with random
stuff on the back. Moo cards does this with Flickr photos. Why not do
that with whatever you currently want/have? I think business cards
should be short-run and current. That way, they're more than just a
static piece of contact information, and you'll have reasons to keep
giving people your cards and for people to keep reading yours! Maybe I
should start date-stamping my business cards... Ah, now there's a
great idea...)

Right. That's the ticket. I should keep a notebook of all these crazy
ideas. Probably a blog page *and* a paper notebook. Probably part of
my Moleskine. And I should go and make those crazy ideas happen, like
advertising on my laptop or tweaking my business card, etc.

I don't mind giving the ideas away. I get terrific feedback. In fact,
if other people pick up the idea and run with it, that means I get to
train my crazy-idea sense for free!

Remember the movie Phenomenon? I want to be that guy, overflowing with
lots of ideas and improvements! I want to be someone you tell about
the cool stuff you're working on because I'll be enthusiastic about it
too, and I *might* just go "Hey, what do you think about trying out
...?"

Simon's fantastic at designing systems from scratch. I'm good at
thinking about how to improve something that's already there, finding
things to smoothen, noticing things that are missing... Come to think
of it, even my computing background points to this. Why do I love open
source development? Because I can build on what's there! Why am I
totally addicted to Emacs? Because it indulges my crazy-idea thing!
Whee!

So I want the ability to explore all these crazy ideas even when I'm
working. I have lots of options in terms of the type of job, too.

A high-margin job that will train me up and take advantage of what I can do well and the crazy ideas I can come up with - marketing and sales, maybe?

A job that develops my skills even though it requires more work and concentration, such as writing. But not for long.

Something that pays for my expenses without demanding any mindshare, such as waiting tables ;) (Can't do that on my work permit, though!)

Right. Getting a better sense of what I want in life. There we go. Does that sound like a plan? Let's make it happen. =)

Last, and certainly not least was Sacha Chua. If we could harness it I'm pretty sure we could power a few small cities of the energy that's contained in this one, tiny person - especially when you get her talking about Emacs. Sacha's demo, entitled, "Livin' la vida Emacs" was hands down the most entertaining of the evening. Sacha has basically taken this simple, extendable text editor and pushed it about as far as it can go - at DemoCamp10 she pulled back the curtain and showed us all her little systems and apps she's created in it. I like my GUI/Windows so the whole text-based thing isn't for me but it certainly was interesting to see just how strung out she's got that machine.

DemoCamp 10 was held last night, and three of the five presentations were from U of T. Sana Tapal (now at Jonah Group) and Andrey Petrov led off with the Online Marking tool; Jonathan Lung (who was part of the student team that presented at DemoCamp 5) showed us all how productive PHP procrastination can be; and Sacha Chua tried to convince us that Emacs isnÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™t actually bad for you. The other two demos were a social networking/quotes site called Quotiki.com, and Broken Tomb, which advertises itself as the worldÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™s first commercial Smalltalk host. There wasnÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™t any new technology, but the presenters were entertaining, and it was fun to read the stuff that flashed by on the screen during their demo; the Smalltalk demo had a lot of technical and other difficulties.

Sacha Chua showed off what can be done in the scriptable environment, in this case emacs, as she went from Text editor, to a.i. doctor, to game engine to task / email organizer and beyond. Sacha was six feet tall on that stage, even though she did not actual levitate at anytime (although she came close, as always). A Tour de force of the Emacs, a text editing tool built in a interpreted lisp language environment, bascially a personalized productivity platform which allows for massive customization. Sacha had the crowd entertained and enthralled. (Sacha blogged her own impressions and mentions that Emacs was speaking to her!)

Within TorontoÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™s Web community, Sacha Chua has become one of the leading ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚ÂœpersonalitiesÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â. Armed with infectious enthusiasm, charm and smarts, she would be an excellent person to hire once she graduates from UoT. The key question is how best to use her talents. It would probably be as a ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Âœsuper customer service rep, who can come into a bad situation and get everyone happy by the time she leaves. If I was an HR person from Microsoft, IBM,, etc. IÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™d be knocking on SachaÃƒÂ¢Ã‚Â€Ã‚Â™s door ASAP.